The Value of One

America is definitely a disposable nation.  From baby diapers, mop pads, and drinking cups to athletic wear, contacts, Baptist preachers, and red shirted crewmen on intergalactic vessels, convenience demands easy disposability.  If it takes up too much room, causes too much work, or gets in the way dispose of it.    It is all good, society can adapt without it.  When needed later, this is America, we can purchase it again.  Even if God decides to dispose of it for us, if we think we need it, we can buy it back.             

Not even life is sacred to our dispose-all mentality.  If the child will cause inconvenience, choice demands expendability.  Mississippi Baptists through The Memorial to the Missing emphatically declare otherwise.  As each penny has value, even more so does the life of each unborn child that each penny represents.  And as a whole, America has discarded a priceless treasure chest of valuable life.           

As irony would have it the latest would be casualty of American convenience is the penny.  As of May of this year, the cost of fabricating the penny is more than the value of the penny itself.  Supposedly, the 1.23 cents it costs to make each penny and the 5.73 cents spent on each nickel have made these two coins conveniently expendable according to a bill introduced to the House.  And in America, the inconvenience of something is directly proportional to its disposability.  In order to adjust to a new financial reality without pennies, ideas are being formulated for efficient rounding of prices.  I can only imagine that in a world run by politicians this means a liberal method of rounding up.  If my High School economics is right, get ready for an increase in the cost of living.  Is our society soon to be completely “centsless?”            

The Memorial to the Missing flies in the face of convenient disposability.  According to the US Department of Agriculture in 2001, the cost of raising one child from conception through college is estimated at $250,800.  This obvious inconvenience coupled with the inconvenience of the costly coins inside produces a conveniently extreme consistency in inconvenience.  Aside from the fact the memorial was neither convenient to erect, nor is it conveniently disposed of, each saved penny shouts defiantly that the child’s worth is not determined by convenience.  Although viewed by many as insignificant, each life is priceless.  Life is not to be idly discarded for the sake of societal convenience.  To rid ourselves of life simply because it will cost us too much to keep is senseless.  Ridding society of pennies might simply increase the cost of living, but ridding ourselves of children has greatly decreased our value of life.              

All things were created by God and for the purposes of God.  Christ’s suffering and death were inconvenient, but He went through them anyway because their long term value and significance were not determined by their convenience.  The cost of following Christ is great and definitely not convenient.  Christ’s command for us to lead by servanthood is not intended for our convenience.  The cost of fulfilling the Great Commission and Acts 1.8 is not even close to convenient.  Certainly our lives were meant, not for our convenience, but for God’s purposes.  In the postmodern society dictated by convenience, the Church, like the memorial, is the monument to purposeful inconvenience.  The Church participates in Christ’s inconvenience so that others may rejoice in purposeful living. 

            Rid the world of pennies and I might be able to adjust and conform to a world without cents, but I despise the mere thought of adjusting, and reject the idea of conforming, to a world without sense.

This entry was posted on 20. March 2007 at 10:27 and is filed under Carpe Java. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.